I have a new youtube channel!

I've finally taken the plunge. I'm back in the nutrition saddle, teaching courses in both Brigham City and Ogden. As I prepared material for the courses, I decided that it would be kind of fun to record some short segments and share them with the internet world at large. This would give me a chance to rehearse and refine certain important concepts and at the same time (hopefully) get some exposure.

So I'm now on youtube.

You can find me at www.youtube.com/doyouseeityet. The name of the nutritional/wellness series is Helping You Become Whole. In the channel I discuss the systems of the body and how our food, thoughts, and actions can and do effect the body for better or for worse. It's best to watch them in order, but if you wish, you can also watch them by subject. My hope is that someone out there will find their life changed for the better.

Have a great day and be well!

It's so Hard to be Wrong

Why is it so hard to be wrong? I guess this should come with a short disclaimer. I'm talking about everyone else. I'm never wrong. This is about everyone else. Really.

But it's so hard to be wrong. I watch my son do something without any thought to the consequences and then allow him to suffer the consequences and tell him why he's suffering them. He comes up with an excuse that is so ridiculously transparent that even he can see it. Why? Because it sucks to be wrong.

It took me several years to admit that my eating habits were terrible. Why? Possibly because I just wanted to eat whatever I want, but I think it goes deeper than that.

I used to think it was because a person was too prideful. I think that may be part of it. But I think it's actually a little deeper still.

I believe that one of the most difficult things to do is to admit when you are wrong simply because you are such a good person. One of your most fervent desires, one of those desires that you hold deep down close to the center of your heart, is to be right. To be good. To not make mistakes. When we discover that we've made a mistake in judgement, it hurts us to the core because we want to be good people, and we've associated being wrong with being bad, or at least something less than good.

Sometimes, when a person makes a mistake in judgement, he or she causes hurt to others. Sometimes this hurt is minimal, but sometimes it is very damaging to one or even many people. How very difficult it is to admit fault when the judgement you make caused hurt to even those you love. The friend who drives drunk. The frozen turkey-thrower of a few years ago. The parents who were raised on donuts and soft drinks who raise their own kids on similar things. The father who creates in his own son a low self-esteem while his desire was to improve the boy. Yes, all of these things harm our loved ones, and yet we many times cannot admit to that harm because it hurts us to the very center. We wanted to do right, and now we feel that the damage we've done in innocence is irreparable. And so we avoid the truth and hurt even more.

I believe that whether you are a religious person or not, the most life-giving concept you can understand is forgiveness. If a person can see plainly what has happened and then forgive himself for his mistakes, he then has the ability to move on. If he cannot do so, then he will be stuck in his own hell forever. The ability to admit ones mistakes is lifegiving to all involved. It allows for vibrant abundance where there was only a stunted hope of progress and growth. It literally allows freedom to make better choices later.

So while most of us find ourselves capable of forgiving others, let's now practice something that (for most people), seems to be much more difficult. Forgiving ourselves.

Society's views on Wellness and who we are

We move around in our respective worlds with one ear connected to a phone and the other ear connected to an ipod. We look at the people around us and assume that everyone is watching us with a critical eye when everyone else assumes we're spending our time watching them. We make sure that we look just right, and just right is what we assume everyone else expects. We don't worry about how we look in our own eyes, because we're too worried about the eyes of our friends and neighbors. When we look in the mirror, we ask the question "What will everyone think of this 'look'?", and we assume that the look defines us.

We've resigned ourselves to the perception that it's what people see in the first 10 seconds of the relationship that really matters. How much of this paradigm is real? Every bit of it that we allow to be real. If we base our self worth on what we believe everyone else thinks about us, we're resigned to a very unhealthy fate. The minute our perception of what everyone else thinks changes is the same minute we once again change our behavior.Our hair color changes, we tan or quit tanning, we go on another diet, because it is how we look that matters, not how we feel.

Yet how we feel emotionally has become inseparably connected to how we feel physically, and how we feel about ourselves is also inseparably connected with how we feel physically. Our emotional and physical feelings cannot be separated. When we are unhealthy, we feel like garbage. When we feel like garbage, we are unhealthy. It is time to pay less attention to our size and how we look and more attention to what is inside, both literally and figuratively.

If we truly wish to have health and wellness, we will work from the inside out, not the outside in, because when we start on the outside we rarely if ever go past what can be seen to what matters. Let us face the fear we have of what other people think. Let us stand in front of that fear and send it to the hell it came from. Let us declare without equivocation that we will be who we are because this is the only way to really find the truth. The opposite of fear is love, and it begins with loving ourselves.